With the boat safe in a slip at Barra de Navidad we booked a
6 hour bus ride to take us to the suburb of Tlaquepaque in the Guadalajarian
metropolis. Having been in quite a few Mexican municipal buses, we were not
looking forward to the long ride. The
ETN line, however, provides a surprisingly luxurious experience with a modern,
air conditioned, soft-riding bus equipped with business class size recliner
seats. Thus protected in our modern bubble we were able to ride along the way
through a great salt-flats dust storm that reduced visibility to fog like
conditions.
Tlaquepaque proved to be a little oasis of neighborhood beauty. So much of Mexico seems to be this way: large
swaths of poverty, littered with garbage strewn wrecked and abandoned buildings
and then suddenly, something really nice appears. An arts and crafts centre, Tlaquepaque, is an
old neighborhood with narrow streets fronting what once were prosperous family
casas. Invisible behind the façade of drab
2-storey street-front entries lay lovely homes with huge gardens in the
rear. Such was our guest-house. The Casa
de Retono provided modest accommodations, but with an excellent bed and modern
tiled bathroom – and oblivious to the street scene a hundred feet away, a lovely
garden to enjoy: sunlight dappling through shady trees, hummingbirds flying, birds
singing and flowers blooming.
The touristy but still very interesting arts, crafts and
restaurant district was a few blocks walk to the north. Centred on the traditional Tlaquepaque town
church and square, the old streets of mansions have been converted to craft
manufacturing operations, arts stores, cantinas and eateries, both traditional
and fusion. The Casa Luna restaurant
where we ate our first meal is decorated in a style of some sort of elegant
magical realism, with great interior sculpted trees hanging a myriad of softly
lit baubles, in a room strewn all over with other statuaries, paintings and lovely
table settings. Hard to describe, but a charming
place to enjoy a fine meal over a bottle of wine.
The museums, churches and buildings of Guadalajara provided
a pleasant day of sight-seeing. As
church architecture, the cathedral, consecrated in 1618, is a majestic example
of great scale meant to shock and awe and filled throughout with fantastic
stained glass and artful reliquary. The
Palacio de Gobierno, a still operational government building, is painted with
huge and fantastic frescos by the master muralist, Jose Clemente Orozco. For more work by this genius of the revolution
we visited the Instituto Cultural de Cabanas.
On this day and the days to follow as we meandered on our
way, never too much to take in on one go, we visited a half dozen more museums
and galleries, seeing so many wonderful works, ancient and contemporary. For
lunches, there were bistros and beer and tasty bits, and for dinners a mess of
choices ranging from tacos to fine dining.
During the wild and formative years of youth we discovered
the pleasures of rodeo, with all of its attendant machismo, crowd watching and
beer drinking. So the opportunity to go
to a Charreadas and see how the Mexicans do rodeo was not to be missed. The hats are different and some of the
displays of horsemanship and cattle handling, but the spectacle of bronco
riding definitely crosses cultures. Like
back at home, charreadas, is mostly a family affair of rancher people, dads and
moms, kids and uncles. There is less
participation in the sporting part for the girls than the boys, but even here
there is some small progress apparent, if only yet a chink in the great armour
of horsey Mexican masculinity.
In the middle of our time in Guadalajara we took the tourist
“tequila train tour” to the town of Tequila.
We learnt about the cultivation of agave, from planting to harvest and
thence to autoclaving, fermentation, distillation and barrel aging. We tasted (and brought back for further
tasting) a terrific Jose Cuervo Reserva de Familia Extra Anejo. And then
homeward to Tlaquepaque we rode the rail car, comfy in our luxurious seats,
with our personal tequila serving table and the central serving bar all fitted
in gleaming burnished wood.
After five days in Guadalajara we
headed back towards the boat, staying two days in the charming little town of
Comala, a small town living under the great cone of the highly active “Volcan
de Fuego”, with its most recent blast only 2 weeks previous, at its summit
still belching out gas.
Nearing midnight
on our first night of arrival, with shops mostly shuttered, we found tacos and
beer in a tiny restaurant hidden attached to a small tienda. Yet another unexpectedly fabulous meal with
the value price of $6.50 CDN including a generous tip. Guided by Jupiter, the hotel proprietor, we
hiked for a volcano viewing in the avocado plantations, starting our day with
coffee grown and roasted by a tiny producer at the foot of the trail. The most exquisite coffee we have ever
tasted, sweet and floral. We wisely
bought a pound for the boat, but sadly it is now almost gone and we will surely
never see its like again! Finishing our
hike we visited a commercial scale coffee producer and learnt more of the
intricacies involved in the making of our essential morning beverage.
Truly, it was a trip with some of our favourite things: good
food, the pleasure of travel to places neither of us have ever been, a train
trip, fine tequila, a rodeo, a hike of many vistas, and every day examples of
beautiful art to behold. Who could ask for
anything more?
Our B&B Casa del Retono in artsy Tlaquepaque, Guadalajara.
I can't resist including just 1 photo of my lunch at Teatro Delgollado..
Art museums at Tonala, Guadalajara.
Orozco's ceiling painting at Palacio de Gobierno, Guadalajara.
Instituto Cultural Cabanas, Guadalajara
Another super old Cathedral, Tonala, Guadalajara.
Yah! The all day Jose Cuervo Tequilla Train Tour.
Agave fields near the town of Tequilla.
Parroquia Santiago Apostol, Tequilla.
Mariachi Bands and more Tequilla!
The Sunday rodeo in Guadalajara.
....entertainment for all ages.
Hmmm......handsome cowboys!
A closer look at the handsome cowboys!
Two days in Comala. Hike to the active Volcano of Comala.
Coffee processing.
Hacienda Nogueras, Real de Nogueras, displaying the artworks of a Nogueras.
